2008 – Behold, the video for AC/DC’s “Rock N’ Roll Train.” It has all the ingredients of an AC/DC video: Angus Young in a schoolboy outfit, fire, sweat and Brian Johnson wearing a vest, with footage of train crashes added for thematic continuity. “Rock N’ Roll Train” is the first single from the band’s upcoming Black Ice, due out in Wal-Marts on October 21st. The album will be followed by a tour, with AC/DC implementing the new paperless ticketing technology for select seats. The paperless tickets will “help ensure fan club members and fans purchasing designated seats will be able to secure tickets at face value,” Ticketmaster said in a statement. Both Tom Waits and Metallica have embraced the new ticketing program, which requires buyers to show identification when arriving at the venue.
2008 – Unknown Mozart music found in French library
The Associated Press , Paris | Thu, 09/18/2008 8:18 PM | Life
A French library going through its archives has turned up a previously unknown piece of music by Mozart.
Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria, said Thursday that there is no doubt that the single sheet was written by the composer and that it is “really important.”
He described the work as the preliminary draft of a musical composition. He said it was found by a library in Nantes, western France, as staff were going through its archives.
The city is planning to hold a news conference on the find later on Thursday.
Leisinger said the library contacted his foundation for help authenticating the work.
The sheet was bequeathed to the library by an autograph collector in the 19th century and was catalogued back then as part of the library’s collection, he said.
But it was later “entirely forgotten,” essentially becoming lost to scholars for more than a century, and was only rediscovered by the library as it re-catalogued its archives in recent years. It was unclear what happened to the library’s 19th century catalogue.
“This is absolutely new,” Leisinger said in a telephone interview. “We have new music here.”
“His handwriting is absolutely clearly identifiable,” he added. “There’s no doubt that this is an original piece handwritten by Mozart.”
There have been about 10 Mozart finds of such importance over the past 50 years, he said. If sold, the single sheet would likely be worth around US$100,000 (euro70,000).
“The fact that an entirely new sheet shows up is extremely rare,” he said.
Circumstantial evidence, including the type of paper, suggests Mozart did not write it before 1787, Leisinger said. Mozart died in 1791.
Mozart was interested in church music at that time and was planning to become the choir and music director of Vienna’s main cathedral, although he died before he could take up the post.
In all, about 100 such examples of musical drafts by Mozart are known. Many are notes for works that he went on to complete.
But the rediscovered sheet is the “draft for a piece that Mozart did not work out for whatever reason,” said Leisinger.
“It’s a melody sketch so what’s missing is the harmony and the instrumentation but you can make sense out of it,” he said. “The tune is complete. It’s only one part and not the whole score with eight or twelve parts.”
“One can really get a feeling of what Mozart meant although we do not know how he would have orchestrated it.”
The sheet appears also to have been examined in the 19th century by Aloys Fuchs, a well-respected autograph hunter who collected works from more than 1,500 musicians.
Fuchs wrote, “authenticity of this present handwriting of W.A. Mozart is confirmed,” in an annotation dated Aug. 18, 1839, in Vienna.
2008 – Gilmour’s tribute to Floyd star Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Richard Wright
Gilmour said Wright (right) was “gentle, unassuming and private”.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has praised late bandmate Richard Wright for his “vitality, spark and humour”.
Writing on his website, Gilmour said he had “never played with anyone quite like” the keyboardist, who has died from cancer at the age of 65.
“In my view, all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow,” Gilmour added.
He hailed Wright for his songwriting talent, including on two tracks from 1973′s Dark Side of the Moon album.
Gilmour joined the band in 1968 – a year after the group’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick’s enormous input was frequently forgotten
David Gilmour
“No-one can replace Richard Wright – he was my musical partner and my friend,” Gilmour said.
“In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick’s enormous input was frequently forgotten.
“He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.”
Gilmour said the blend of his and Wright’s voices, together with their “musical telepathy, reached their first major flowering” on 1971 track Echoes, which took up the whole of the second side of album Meddle.
Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright in 2005
The band performed together at Live 8 in 2005 for the first time in 24 years
Released in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon went on to become one of the best-selling and most influential albums in rock history.
Wright helped write much of the album, but was responsible for two songs in particular, Gilmour said.
He added: “After all, without Us and Them, and The Great Gig in the Sky – both of which he wrote – what would The Dark Side Of The Moon have been?”
Gilmour has now pulled out of the premiere of a concert film, David Gilmour Live In Gdansk, in London on Tuesday.
But the guitarist has asked for the event to go ahead without him in memory of Wright, his spokesman said.
Joe Boyd, who produced the band’s early records, said Wright’s keyboards were “an integral part of the Pink Floyd sound”.
“He was a very nice and easy going person,” he said. “It’s very sad to hear of his untimely passing.”
‘Influential musician’
Neil Portnow, president of The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy Awards in the US, added his tribute.
“Richard Wright was an exceptional instrumentalist, whose distinctive keyboard style was essential to the musicality of this world-renowned band,” he said.
“He also scored films and recorded his own instrumental compositions and solo albums.
“Our deepest sympathies go out to his family and fans at this difficult time, as we remember this influential musician.”
The group played at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park in London in 2005, when Roger Waters rejoined his bandmates for a one-off, more than two decades after they fell out.
The four musicians all also played at a tribute concert for Syd Barrett in 2007, with Waters playing a solo set and Wright, Gilmour and Nick Mason making a separate appearance.
Wright’s death was announced in a statement by his spokesman on Monday.
The spokesman said Wright died after “a short struggle with cancer” but declined to give further details.
2008 – Coldplay announced plans to release a new EP and album.
Chris Martin said the band are planning two further releases including the full-length follow up to Viva La Vida, by the end of 2009.
He told BBC 6 Music: “We’re going to put an EP out at Christmas called Prospects March and we’re going to release an album next December to end the decade.”
The band played a one-off show at the BBC Radio Theatre at the weekend.
New material
Martin also said that the EP is recorded but they are still to work on their next album.
The singer also joked his band might disappear from the public eye after the release of their fifth LP.
He added: “And then we’re gonna be ‘Whooosh! Where’ve they gone?’, just like [The Usual Suspects' mythical film villain] Keyser Soze.”
The band will embark on a UK tour later this year visiting London, Manchester and Glasgow.
They are currently offering a free new song, Death Will Never Conquer, available to download from their website.
Coldplay have also been nominated for the best special effects award for Violet Hill at this year’s MTV VMA awards.
Russell Brand will host the event which is due to be held at LA’s Paramount Pictures Studios on 7 September.
2006 – American Idol contestant Derrell Brittenum surrenders to the Georgia police. Along with his twin brother Terrell, Brittenum performed on the hit show while being wanted on theft and forgery charges.
Terrell and Derrell Brittenum caught in new ‘American Idol’ controversy
By Christopher Rocchio, 01/17/2008
One American Idol mini-controversy apparently wasn’t enough for Terrell and Derrell Brittenum, the Memphis twins that were disqualified from the show’s fifth-season Hollywood Round after identity theft charges surfaced.
On Wednesday morning, the brothers’ newly-signed independent record label boldly announced that although American Idol had advanced them to the show’s Hollywood Round after they’d attended Idol’s seventh-season Atlanta auditions this summer, the twins had decided to “decline” the offer and instead release a debut album. The only problem is it wasn’t true.
“We thought long and hard about joining American Idol for season seven. Although it’s a great opportunity, we feel The Brittenum Twins are a group and only one of us can win and if I can’t do it without my brother I don’t think it would be a true win,” Terrell stated in the release. “Also, we have done it before, we know some of the techniques the judges use and don’t want anyone think we have an unfair advantage over the other contestants.”
However during a subsequent Wednesday afternoon interview with Reality TV World, Derrell and Terrell admitted that, despite the boastful announcement, it wasn’t their decision to not participate. Instead, the fact that they had already been 29-years-old at the time of their August audition meant that they were technically ineligible to compete in American Idol’s seventh season. (Idol 7 hopefuls were required to be between 16 and 28 years old as of July 28, 2007 — meaning that all applicants must be born on or between July 29, 1978 and July 28, 1991 in order to be eligible.)
“We auditioned with flying colors… They passed us through to [executive producer Ken Warwick]. Ken Warwick was like, ‘What do you guys think you’re doing? You’re 29-years-old. You know the limit is 28,’” said Terrell. “We were like, ‘We just want a second chance to show the world we’ve been through a lot…’ We just really viewed it as a second chance, and when we sang for Ken, he agreed.”
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Following their meeting with Warwick, Derrell and Terrell claim they were sent to audition for Idol judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson, who all agreed the twins “do possess the talent to come back to the show” and thus awarded them a ticket to the season’s Hollywood Round.
“But before we could go to Hollywood Week — one week before we leave for Hollywood Week — they tell us there’s a possibility that we might not be on the show because our age is posing a problem for the legal department,” said Derrell. “So we fly out for Hollywood Week, and they tell us that we cannot do the show.”
When pressed, the brothers also acknowledged that despite their press release comments, they wouldn’t have declined the chance to participate if producers had waived the age requirement.
Terrell and Derrell Brittenum
“We would have been on… It’s a wonderful vehicle,” Terrell admitted.
“I think I would have taken it,” added Derrell. “You just can’t beat the Idol machine.”
When contacted by Reality TV World, a Fox publicist could not immediately confirm or deny any of the twins claims. In addition, the publicist couldn’t state whether Terrell and Derrell will be featured in American Idol’s seventh-season Atlanta auditions broadcast, which is scheduled to air Tuesday, February 5 at 8PM ET/PT.
“I really wonder if they’re going to air the footage… It was funny, it’s hilarious, it’s a story, it’s a message,” said Terrell. “It’s all of that in one. I really think even though [executive producer Nigel Lythgoe] said they’re not going to use it — I believe that that’s not [going to be] the case. I really believe that they’re going to use it this year, even if we’re not going to be on the show for Hollywood… We make good TV. They know that.”
The Brittenum brothers are no strangers to being uninvited from Idol’s Hollywood Round. They attended Idol 5′s Chicago audition in September 2005 and both immediately impressed the judges with their smooth, soulful voices, earning them a ticket to the season’s Hollywood Round.
However shortly after Fox aired their Idol 5 audition in January 2006, it was revealed the twins were being charged with forgery, theft by deception and financial identity fraud for allegedly buying a 2005 Dodge Magnum using another man’s identity.
While they were released from police custody shortly thereafter, their invite to Idol 5′s Hollywood Round was rescinded by the show’s producers, ending their Idol journey before it ever really began.
They then had a tentative deal with rapper Jermaine Dupri’s SoSo Def Records soon after the controversy, but they claim a lawyer representing them “messed the deal up.”
“We’re sort of trying to U-turn the bad decision we made about stealing the car, just trying to get our lives right,” said Terrell before adding they unfortunately found trouble again. “So we get locked up [in jail] again for an address change in July, and Idol was coming back to Atlanta on the fourteenth. We already planned to audition again for Idol at [age] 29.”
“We just thought let’s just give it another go,” added Derrell. “Maybe we can overturn the bad press and sort of make it good. let people know we made stupid decisions in life — but we still are talented… Just because we made bad decision doesn’t mean we have to stay down in the mess that we’re in. We can always pick ourselves back up and start over again.”
Terrell and Derrell’s first single off their “The Come Up” debut album is scheduled to be released in February via TSG Records, an Atlanta-based company that is home to several R&B singers and rappers. In addition, Terrell and Derrell have launched a foundation called U-Turn where they visit high schools to mentor youth.
Regardless of whether they appear in next month’s Atlanta auditions broadcast, the twins say American Idol viewers may still not have seen the last of them.
“They did give us an opportunity to come back to the show as far as guest appearances,” said Derrell. “So we’re thinking if the single does climb the charts, we’ll call American Idol and I’m sure they would love to put us back on the show.”
2005 – Adding another chapter to her 2005 comeback story, Mariah Carey walks away the big winner at the third annual Vibe Awards. Carey nets artist of the year, album of the year (“The Emancipation of Mimi”), R&B voice of the year and best R&B song (“We Belong Together”).
2000 – Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Patti Smith, and Company Flow are among the entertainers on hand at New York’s Madison Square Garden, adding some musical muscle to a rally for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader. The event draws a sold-out crowd of 18,000 that include the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch, as well as a pair of U.K. musicians: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Billy Bragg.
1980 – In Los Angeles, a billboard is put up advertising Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Every day a brick is added to the billboard until the entire space is covered.
1978 – Player started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Baby Come Back’, a No.32 hit in the UK, the groups only UK hit.
Peter Beckett grew up in Liverpool, England, where he spent four years playing in a band called Palladin. He quit to come to America and join another group, Friends, which recorded for MGM. After a short time, they evolved into Skyband, which released one album on the RCA label. Skyband lasted long enough to play one concert in L.A. and tour abroad before breaking up.
In 1976, Peter slipped on his jeans and attended a classy Hollywood party. To his surprise, everyone there was wearing white except for one other guest, who had also come in Levi’s. Peter figured the other guy had to be a musician, so they sat down together and began to talk. As it turned out, he was John Charles Crowley, a singer/songwriter from Galveston Bay, Texas. The two hit it off, and made a date to listen to each other’s material.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 14, 1978
1. Baby Come Back
Player
2. How Deep is Your Love
Bee Gees
3. Here You Come Again
Dolly Parton
4. You’re in my Heart
Rod Stewart
5. Back in Love Again
LTD
A few days later, Peter and J.C. held a jam session, and afterward decided to form a band. They added Ron Moss, a bass player from L.A., and veteran of two bands: Punk Rock and Count Zeppelin and his Fabled Airship. Ron brought along a high school friend, John Friesden, who, at one time, had toured the world as the assistant producer and drummer with the Ice Follies. Keyboard man Wayne Cook came abroad just a little too late; he missed being included in the photo used on their first album cover.
The boys were spotted by the production team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, and signed to their company, Haven. Lambert and Potter then negotiated a deal with RSO. A debut album was planned, which one critic was to call “a ten-song exercise in straightforward, romantic pop.” One of those tunes was “Baby Come Back.”
We wrote that pretty quickly,” recalled Peter. “It took about three hours one night, and then we spent about an hour the next night polishing it up. J.C. and I had just broken up with our girlfriends, and we were still feeling the sting. When we sat down to write, our moods just blended, and it came out as ‘Baby Come Back.’
“I remember rehearsing the song in J.C.’s garage studio. It was the middle of summer, hotter than hell, and there we sat with our acoustic guitars, working it up amid the spiders and cockroaches. We knew it sounded like a hit, though. There was so much personal feeling in the song that we knew we had something special.”
“Baby Come Back” broke on the radio in October 1977 and reached number one early in January. It spent three weeks at the top — more than seven months on the charts. During that time, over two million copies were sold.
This infuriated some critics, who felt that the boys’ style was a “blatant carbon” of several other groups. However, reviewers couldn’t seem to agree as to the source of their familiar sound. Various writers claimed that “Baby Come Back” was an imitation of Hall and Oates’ “She’s Gone,” while others insisted the band copied Foreigner, the Bee Gees, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Journey, and even Andy Gibb.
“Just call it rock ‘n’ soul,” said Ron Moss. “We pull from the best of both worlds.”
Player didn’t perform live until November 1977, when they appeared as the opening act for Gino Vanelli. Later, they toured with Heart, Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Clapton. Their second single, “This Time I’m in it for Love,” was a Top 10 hit in the spring of 1978. “Prisoner Of Your Love” was a Top 40 hit in November of that year. Their last charting singles were for Casablanca in 1980 and RCA in 1982.
And their name? “We saw the word on television when the players from the show were listed,” Peter explained. “We knocked off the ‘s’ and went with it. I think the word holds a certain ambiguity.”
“And also, people can hold up our album, point to it, and say, ‘That’s a great record, Player’.”
1976 – This week in 1976, Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled album hit number 1 after being on the charts for over a year. Songs such as “Over My Head” and “Rhiannon” helped the album reach the 5 million mark in sales in the U.S. alone. And after group members heard a cover of “Say You Love Me” by Canadian artist, Shirley Eikhard, the band added a splash of guitar to their own version and released it as a single. It would go on to be the best charting song from the album.
1975 – Sean Lennon is born this day in rock history!
Sean Taro Ono Lennon (aka Sean Ono Lennon, born 9 October 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor. He is the son of musicians and peace activists John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Biography
Early life and education
Sean Lennon was born in New York City on 9 October 1975 (his father’s 35th birthday). Kyoko Chan Cox and Julian Lennon are his half-siblings. After Sean’s birth, John became a house husband, doting on his young son until his murder in 1980. Sean was educated at the exclusive private boarding school Institut Le Rosey in Rolle, Switzerland and earlier at New York’s private Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Dalton. He later attended Columbia University, though only for three semesters before dropping out to focus on his music career.
His debut into the music world came at the age of six, reciting a story on his mother’s 1981 album Season of Glass. From childhood into his teen years Sean continued to collaborate with his mother, contributing vocals and receiving production credit on her solo albums It’s Alright (I See Rainbows), Starpeace and Onobox. At sixteen Sean co-wrote the song “All I Ever Wanted” with Lenny Kravitz for his 1991 album Mama Said. By 1995 Sean had formed the band IMA (with Sam Koppelman and Timo Ellis) to play alongside his mother on her album Rising. Sean also made appearances in film, featured in the cast of Michael Jackson’s 1988 Moonwalker and portraying a teenager experiencing visions of various MC Escher paintings in Sony’s 1990 promotional short-film Infinite Escher.
Cibo Matto and Into The Sun
In 1996 Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto were invited by Ono to remix the song “Talking To The Universe” for a Rising remix EP Rising Mixes. They met Sean and invited him to join them on tour as a bass player. This eventually led to Sean contributing to their side-project Butter 08 and to his becoming a member of the group. He continued to play with them on tour, joining them on television and providing bass guitar and vocals on their EP, Super Relax. Through his association with Cibo Matto, Lennon was approached by Adam Yauch (of the Beastie Boys), who expressed an interest in his music and persuaded him to sign a record contract with Grand Royal Records. Regarding Grand Royal, Lennon has said, “I think I found the only label on the planet who doesn’t care who my parents are and what my name is. It’s a good feeling to know that I wouldn’t have gotten the offer if they wouldn’t have liked my songs. That’s pretty rare in the music business!”.
Lennon’s solo début Into the Sun, was released in 1998. A music video for “Home”, a single from the album, was directed by Spike Jonze and enjoyed extended airplay on MTV. The album was produced by fellow Cibo Matto member Yuka Honda, who Lennon claimed was his inspiration for the album. They struck up a personal relationship as well as a creative one.
He would go on to tour (often backed by Cibo Matto) supporting Into The Sun. During this period he would appear on radio programs such as The Howard Stern Show and KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. He would later recall promoting the album as a bitter experience due to the media focus on his family rather than his own music. In 1999, Sean’s EP Half Horse, Half Musician was released featuring new tracks such as “Heart & Lung” and “Happiness” as well as remixes of songs from Into The Sun. Along with Half Horse Half Musician 1999 saw the release of Cibo Matto’s second album Stereo Type A. Sean stepped out of his traditional role as the group’s bass player, this time playing a much wider range of instruments (such as drums, guitars and synthesizers). Despite being well received Stereo Type A was to be the final Cibo Matto album and the group disbanded.
In 2000 Lennon briefly entered the world of hip hop, contributing vocals to Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Handsome Boy Modeling School and Jurassic 5. In 2001 on national television, Sean performed Beatles classics “This Boy”, “Across The Universe” and “Julia” alongside Robert Schwartzman, Rufus Wainwright and Moby for Come Together: A Night for John Lennon’s Words and Music. In the following years Sean faded out of the spotlight. However he collaborated with various bands and artists as a session musician and producer.
Return and Friendly Fire
After the demise of Grand Royal Records in 2001, Sean signed with Capitol Records (whose parent company EMI has released the vast majority of his father’s musical output, group and solo), yet no solo material surfaced until February 2006, when “Dead Meat” was released as the first single from his new album, Friendly Fire. A promotional trailer for the CD/DVD package of Friendly Fire was leaked online in early 2006. The trailer featured scenes from the film version of the album, a DVD of music videos comprised into a film. The videos were actually screen tests for Coin Locker Babies, another project on which Lennon is working which became a cinematic counterpart to his new album and was featured as a bonus track on the French release of Friendly Fire.
Although again establishing himself as a solo artist, Lennon has continued his work as a session musician and producer, lending his talent to the likes of Dopo Yume, Albert Hammond, Jr. (of The Strokes) and model/singer Irina Lazareanu. With the release of new material and subsequent touring Sean launched a website featuring music, videos and a forum for his fans. Various members of the forum have even crated a fan-made cover album entitled Truth Mask Replica. In a You Tube video released for his website (January, 2008) Lennon has stated that he is working on a new solo album as well.
Musical influence
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Lennon has said that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys are major influences in his music and he interviewed Wilson on a limited edition CD entitled Words and Music. During the release of Into The Sun, Sean often talked about his admiration for the Brazilian band Os Mutantes. While in Brazil, Sean performed live with Arnaldo Baptista (bass guitar player and vocalist of Os Mutantes) and later designed the artwork for the Os Mutantes album, Tecnicolor (2000). Lennon has stated that The Beastie Boys album Check Your Head was a source of inspiration, with its varied music styles contained in one album.
Discography
Solo
* Into the Sun (1998)
* Half Horse, Half Musician (1999)
* Friendly Fire (2006)
With Cibo Matto
* Super Relax (1997)
* Stereo Type A (1999)
Film Scores
* Smile for the Camera (2005)
* Friendly Fire (2006)
* The Stranger (2008)
* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead (2008)
* Tea Fight (2008)
Producer
* Sean Lennon – Half Horse Half Musician (1999)
* Soulfly – Primitive (2000)
* Valentine Original Soundtrack (2001)
* Esthero – Wikked Lil’ Grrrls (2005)
* Sean Lennon – Friendly Fire (2006)
* Irina Lazareanu – Some Place Along the Way (2007)
Filmography
* Moonwalker (1988) – Actor
* Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Season 2, Episode 1 – “When She Was Bad” (1997) – musician, Cibo Matto
* Smile for the Camera (2005) – Original Score, Writer
* Friendly Fire (2006) – Actor, Original Score, Writer
* The Stranger (2008) – Original Score
* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead (2008) – Original Score
* Tea Fight (2008) – Original Score
* Coin Locker Babies (2008 in production) – Actor, Writer
1970 – Emerson, Lake & Palmer give their debut performance in Plymouth, England.
Progressive rock can be a very disreputable subject. No other musical style has been so vilified by the critics and became a synonym for ‘pompous’ and ‘bombastic.’ Almost every music critic in the early ’70′s had something unflattering to write about it. None of them seem to have noticed that the genre combined the old with the new and brought things to popular music that simply wasn’t there before. Prog rock flourished during the early ’70′s but was wiped out almost completely by 1976- each of the bands who played it had to undergo changes in order to ensure their survival or else evaporate during the late ’70′s and the ’80′s.
It’s hard to decide which band best represents the genre. King Crimson’s debut In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969) might be considered one of the first pure prog rock album while Genesis’s Selling England By The Pound was the best prog album to my mind and Yes and Pink Floyd made a huge splashes on both sides of the Atlantic, but none of these bands was never really identified with the genre as closely as Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Johnny Rotten’s hatred of Floyd to the contrary). ELP shared prog rock’s great paramount and deep chasms, reflecting all that was good and bad in that time, which is known the age of the rock dinosaurs.
ELP, like many early prog bands, was an English group. Keith Emerson, its founder and keyboard player, began to take formal piano lessons when he was eight years old. He started to learn classical music but was fed up with “playing like Bach.” Later, he discovered jazz and started to perform in little clubs while he was in college. It was during that time that Emerson, searching for a new sound, purchased with the benevolent help of his father a new Hammond L100 electric piano. Later, Emerson would delve into the world of keyboards even further.
After playing in several bands, Emerson heard that P. P Arnold (then a successful solo singer and today a back up singer for ex-Floyd Roger Waters) was looking for players. He then formed The Nice, with the group playing behind Arnold. But after six months, they began performing by themselves. During late 1967 and early 1968, the band traveled in Britain with such names as Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. In January 1968, they traveled in the U. S and came back to Britain just in time to see the release of their first album The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (a pun on the band members’ names). They later recorded “America,” a work that combined Leonard Bernstein’s famous piece from the West Side Story with Dvorak’s New World Symphony and protest lyrics, making for a complex political statement (as well as a controversial once since Bernstein didn’t approve of it). During that time, Emerson began to use knives when playing. He nailed them to his keyboard in order to help him hold certain keys while he was playing. This was just one of his yet-to-come stage tricks.
The Nice recorded another two albums during the next couple of years, but in April 1970, Emerson decided that he had enough and the band ceased to exist. Nevertheless, their manager was able to piece together more albums based on live shows and out-takes and eventually try to piggyback ELP’s success to get some sales.
During a King Crimson/Nice show in 1969, Emerson met Crimson’s young bass player Greg Lake backstage. After a small chat, they have decided to form a new band in several months. Now with The Nice project finished, Emerson was ready to move on.
Greg Lake started his musical career when he was given a guitar by his mother. When he was just a school boy, he wrote the song that will later become one of ELP’s greatest hits, “Lucky Man.” During the late ’60′s, Lake played in several bands. One of these bands, The Shy Limbs, nearly got him killed. The band used to sleep in a van and eat from the hand to mouth. Eventually, Lake developed pneumonia and had nearly died before his mother sent him to a doctor.
When he played with another band, The Gods, he caught the attention of Robert Fripp who was searching a bass player for King Crimson. Lake sang and played bass on the band’s first album, In The Court Of The Crimson King. But Fripp’s tyranny made the members of the band bitter and Lake was searching for a way out. Eve after meeting Emerson and making plans with him, Lake still helped Fripp with recording the next King Crimson’s album In The Wake Of Poseidon (retained as lead singer but not bassist) and then went of to start his own new group.
But the duo was searching for a drummer. They met Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix’s drummer who didn’t want to join but tried to get Hendrix into the new band. After the couple decided to join Carl Palmer as their drummer, the British Press fantasized about a new band with two virtuosos such as Hendrix and Emerson and speculated that the band will be called Hendrix, Emerson, Lake and Palmer or HELP (which would have surely made for some hilarious headlines). But Hendrix died in September 1970, before this idea came to fruition.
Emerson and Lake found Carl Palmer after he was recommended to them. They bought an album of his band Atomic Rooster and liked what they heard so they asked him to join them. But Palmer said no at first; he has been working hard, along with Vincent Crane, to get his band running and didn’t want to throw it all away. He was playing professionally since he was 15 years old and just recently toured with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown which had a U.K. number one hit chart single, “Fire.”
But after continuing persuasion by Greg Lake, he decided to join them for a jam session. He enjoyed it very much and the trio began to practice until May 1970, when Palmer finished his work with Atomic Rooster and thus, ELP was born. Like another then-recent supergroup, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the English trio took the audacious move of using the group members’ names as the name of the group itself.
During 1970, ELP recorded its debut album, which was called, appropriately enough, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They drew attention from the beginning because every one of its members played in a famous group before ELP. They were a super group, a term that was given to Cream in 1967 and was quite common during the late ’60′s and early ’70′s when music world was managed like the NBA. The first album included a modern version of a Bela Bartok piece called “The Barbarian.” It also included one of their greatest radio hits, “Lucky Man”. Lake was also responsible for the recording and it gave the album a very unique final sound. Another instrument which was innovatively used was the Moog Synthesizer. Although the Monkeys played it in 1967, no other musician has gained control over it as did Emerson. He was the first musician to use it on stage and managed to get amazing sounds out of this analog multi-switched instrument., becoming one of the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer (inventor Bob Moog himself though of Emerson as one of the great exponents of his Moog synthesizer).
The band gained wide public interest at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, during which Keith Emerson, dressed in shiny robe, fired two cannons (thus slightly injuring an Italian camera man) and played his keyboard like a madman.
In early 1971, they released their second album, Tarkus- their first concept album – which was recorded in only two weeks. The main theme of the album (the first side of the vinyl album) is, unsurprisingly, “Tarkus.” Tarkus is a bionic armadillo who fights other bionic creatures until it is convinced by the Manticore (a mythical hybrid creature that’s part human, part lion) to cease from its deviant ways. You may say that the story is a parable about wars and the ill-necessity of machines, but ELP claimed that it didn’t have any such exalted intentions. Significantly though, ELP later named its record label Manticore Records.
Tarkus was very popular in Britain and reached 9 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Six months after Tarkus, the band released Pictures At An Exhibition (1972), a newly rearranged version of the famous piece by Mussorgsky which was recorded during a live show in Newcastle City Hall. The band had already played it before at the Isle of Wight Festival (with the shooting cannons). Pictures was a very controversial album. Some people thought that it was a great achievement in rock while some classical fans thought that it was a disgrace to the original composer and some classic rock fans thought that it was self indulgent, masterbative crap that had nothing to do with rock itself. While I might understand some of the detractors’ opinions, I still think that they have ignored the most important thing in this album- the fact that these players combined two completely different types of music into a wholly amazing piece. Instead of classical masters like Liszt or Rachmaninoff who run in a raging fury on a classical keyboard, we had a new one who combines an amazing technique with amazing technicality and creating amazing, weird and feel accentuating sounds. We can get a great sense of pace from the rhythm section as well, which combines a deep electric bass with excellent drum work. And isn’t it true that many times, great art initially faces controversy when it first appears? If one is listening to this piece without comparing it to its antecedents, one can hear that Picture At An Exhibition is a very innovative work like no other.
Another anecdote about this album is that during a 1993 show in Budapest, Lake saw a man crying on the front row. After the show he asked the man why he was crying, and he told him that 15 years earlier he spend three months in jail because the Communist regime found out that he had had a copy of the album. That was the power of such music and how it was both loved and despised so strongly.
In 1972, the band released their third studio album, Trilogy. This was another eclectic album which drew on classical sources, combining the works of Ravel with the works of Aaron Copland and, of course, highly skilled playing by the members of the band. The album also contained ELP’s best selling single, “From The Beginning.”
From 1972 to 1974, ELP were one of the most popular bands in the world. With the exception maybe of other great showmen like Alice Cooper and Kiss, their shows were the most extravagant seen. Emerson was breaking keyboards like Pete Townsend use to break guitars while he also used a special remote which allowed him to play without even touching the instrument. Carl Palmer modified his drum battery by adding all kinds of bells, tubes and percussions. Capitalizing on their success, the band started its own label in 1973 to manage their music and to help new prog bands to achieve exposure, including Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield and Italian band PFM.
In 1973, ELP recorded another studio album, Brain Salad Surgery. The cover was designed by H. R Giger, which became one of the first high-profile gigs for the artists who later designed the set and creatures for the movie series Alien as well as David Lynch’s Dune and album covers for the Dead Kennedys and Debbie Harry of Blondie. The first side of BSS contains, like every ELP album before, a new version of previous works, this time William Blake’s “Jerusalem” and Alberto Ginstera’s “Toccata” (along with the stamp of approval from the composer himself). The rest of the first side contains two other short songs, including Lake’s lovely “Still… You Turn Me On” and a collaboration with Pete Sinfield. The end of the first side and entire second side of the album contained a 30 minute piece called “Karn Evil 9″ (a pun with carnival). The piece is divided into three parts and talks about the battle between men and technology (recalling Tarkus).
1974 was the best year in ELP’s history. The road shows were unprecedentedly grandiose, featuring twenty tons of musical gear. Lake played while standing on a 5000 pound rug because he was afraid two get electrified (he nearly did during an earlier show). Emerson’s piano flew and spun in the air while he was playing. In April 6, 1974 the band played at the California Jam rock festival after Deep Purple. 350,000 viewers watch their best performance and the show was broadcasted nationwide. Later on, they released a triple album to commemorate the tour with a title taken from “Karn Evil 9″ (Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends– Ladies and Gentlemen. Emerson, Lake and Palmer). ELP’s albums hit top of Billboard again and Melody Maker Magazine voted them as “Best Band” along with “Best Keyboard Player” and “Best Drummer” (leaving poor Lake in the lurch). But it was to be ELP’s, as well as the progressive rock’s, apex- from here the only way to go was down. Times began to change.
After the tour, the three had decided to take some much-deserved rest. During the next three years, they bought new homes, had some rest and worked on solo albums. When they came back, punk was the popular style of the day and one of the punk’s main targets were the progressive dinosaurs, who they painted as villains that were ruining rock and growing rich and fat from it.
During the next couple of years, the band recorded two “group solo albums” (1977′s Works) with a part for every member solo composition (and years before Outkast or Hella had the idea). A tour in 1977 was economically destructive for the band members, with a loss of nearly two million dollars. And then in 1978 came Love Beach, an album that was made because the trio was under contract and was forced to do the album. Even worse, from its Beach Boys title and sunny cover image, it’s the least convincing of all of their records. This was the end. In July 1979, ELP disbanded.
During the next 20 years the band reunited as Emerson, Lake and Powell (with Cozy Powell formerly of Whitesnake, Jeff Beck Group). Palmer was available as he was involved in the most commercial of all post-ELP projects- another supergroup called Asia (included former members of Yes and Crimson).Emerson, Lake and Powell disband in the late ’80′s but Emerson, Lake and Palmer reunited again. In the early 90′s, rthey ecording a new album (Black Moon) and embarked on a few tours during the 90′s, occasionally disrupted by Emerson’s problem with nerves in his right arm (no doubt brought on by years of his theatrical playing). ELP then ceased to exist once again in 1998.
The ELP phenomenon was not unique. Every prog rock band had to reinvent itself in order to survive the punk revolution and the shallow ’80′s. Of course, they had to do it because the bands members were accustomed to a certain living style they wanted to preserve, but the prog rock style itself became somewhat inadequate. In a world where punk could transfer the essence of a song in two minutes of guitar work, nobody needed a 15 minutes piece for the same task. The bright side is that today with the Internet revolution more and more bands can get exposure and the prog rock is more alive than ever, as witnessed by the subsequent math rock movement and groups like TV on the Radio and Radiohead who have picked up on prog’s threads.
But a parallel ELP can never exist. ELP symbolized progressive rock in all its glory, with thousands of fans, tons of technical music and a highly desired glamour. But here laid its weakness. ELP became literally too expensive to maintain. All the stage tricks, all the extra players and accessories led to a situation were the cancellation of one show could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The band’s pomposity was derided by almost many writers who instead of listening to the music as it was, tried to find the band’s faults. The fact is that few other bands has ever taught so many young men and women that classical music can correspond very well with modern rock and roll. No other band could have done it as good as ELP had.
Sure, you can say they were a bunch of self indulged hedonists and you might accuse them of plagiarism, but to me, ELP is one of the symbols of London during the ’70′s. Every time I am listening to one of ELP’s early records, all I have to do is close my eyes and I am there, walking from Oxford St. to Regent St. There you are, going through Soho, watching King Crimson perform in Hyde Park or David Bowie at the Hammersmith Apollo, or just wandering around in the streets of London at its peak; traveling in a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
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